I was driving home the other day in some relatively mild local traffic when I saw a person riding a bike alongside the road drinking one of those huge cups of soda from one of the local gas stations. I’m not sure why I even paid attention to them in the first place, but I definitely did notice one thing with them that saddened me greatly. I watched as they took the last gulp of their drink from their very large cup and then throw it on the ground as they continued on their way.
I always wonder how and why so much trash ends up littering our roadsides and frankly, our planet for that matter. But lately, I seem to be paying attention a lot more to things like this around me and have seen plenty of others do the same by throwing their garbage out their car windows, or leaving it in parking lots where they had previously parked, or even making an attempt to use trash receptacles, only to see their trash miss and fall to the ground, and then leaving it there anyway.
I think what was most disturbing about this bicyclist’s specific act of littering was the fact that he was riding into a parking lot of another convenience store where several trash receptacles were a mere few feet away from him. As I drove away, I wondered about the thinking or lack of thinking that went in his action.
There are a lot of problems like this happening all around us, some of which are far out of our control. But throwing our trash away is something we all can do, yet so often, so many litter with no respect for our environment. This is one behavior I must say I don’t engage in, probably because my parents taught me well to respect the environment I live in. But so many others don’t. They don’t see how a cup thrown on the ground or leaving various other trash behind can lead to a butterfly effect of problems in society.
Take one of our larger waterways for example. I live near one of them, Lake Erie, where sadly, many boaters on a daily basis will throw their trash overboard while out fishing and having fun on the water. Plenty of animals and ecosystems end up suffering because of this. Water gets polluted, then potential food for us dies, tax dollars’ increase because of the clean-ups that have to take place from littering, and so on and so forth. All because of a lack of understanding and caring that usually comes with those who litter.
Here’s a great scenario. Takes the simplest scene of those plastic pieces that hold a six pack together. When left in the environment, animals consume or get stuck in them and die. Now imagine that any of those animals have families that are now left behind, starving, and they die too. Now reverse it and imagine the same thing happening to one of us and our families being left behind because we die from something we got “tangled up in” by someone else’s blatant ignorance. It feels different doesn’t it, when we are directly affected. But littering often is a direct impact, it’s more of an indirect one that eventually takes its toll on all of us farther down the road.
It’s truly sad how people don’t see how everything is connected on this planet, even as small as throwing a cup down on the ground. But hopefully one day we all will. Hopefully one day we all might start having a lot more respect for a planet that God has blessed us with, rather than continue to abuse her in so many ways…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson